


Who'll Rise or Fall, Give His All for America?

by crowleyshouseplant (orphan_account)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 11:36:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1897509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Bucky ships to Europe, he learns from one of the new recruits about Captain America.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who'll Rise or Fall, Give His All for America?

**Author's Note:**

> For Lena and Kaylie

Bucky polishes his buttons so they shine. His shoes too. Smooths his already pressed uniform. Brushes away with a flick of his fingers stray hairs from the cat that sometimes hangs around their porch because Steve put down a bowl of water for it once when it was hot and it was summer, and Bucky continued the habit because why not. 

He’s careful with himself in front of the mirror. He combs his hair so it lies straight and neat, using pomade to keep it slick and shiny, like he and Steve used to do when they were kids instead of grown like they were now.

Grown enough to be plucked from home and country, shipped across a big sea, to fight a war.

Bucky’s eyes slide to the envelope that had brought his draft notice. Steve doesn’t know, because as far as Steve knows, he had enlisted because it was the right thing to do.

He allows himself a brief moment to close his eyes, steady his breathing.

Time for one last dance.

~*~

Bucky doesn’t sleep well. If he’s lucky enough to have a bed or a cot, it’s hard, and too small. Usually, there’s just the cold ground, which can turn quick enough into the cold, wet ground.

There’s no showers to wipe off the grime, the muck, the blood. His hair grows coarse, and he combs it because he’s still an officer in the army, but it never stays put for long, just like he doesn’t stay put for long, always marching, always on the move.

He learns quick enough from watching not to ask for rests. To suck it up. If he hurts, button up your lips and don’t think of home, of Steve, because then the hurt just spreads from the blister turned sore and red to your gut, to your heart.

~*~

He cleans his gun with cool precision, rag dirty with gun powder, scorched fire scraping his lungs. 

He wipes the sweat from his brow, leaving a dirty streak across his skin.

Someone gestures to it, and he looks at the rag in his hand, and continues cleaning.

He puts the gun back together quickly, efficiently.

He can do this with his eyes closed—he knows this, because they made him do it often enough, fingers trigger light on a stopwatch. 

This time, he chooses to keep his eyes open. His hands slide to the soft staccato beat as the pieces click together. One, two and-a three four, one, two, and-a three four, syncopate the  _and_  into a dropped whisper.

He takes the gun apart to do it again and again and again until its time to try to sleep.

~*~

He writes Steve asking if he remembers the way his mom used to cook their eggs, scrambled with just a little shine in them. Salt, pepper. Tomatoes if they had some. A shake of cinnamon if they had some.

They don’t make the eggs like that here, he writes.

~*~

They get new recruits. They always get new recruits to take the places of the ones who don’t come back.

You don’t look like you’re old enough to sign up, Bucky says. Not that that would stop someone who was determined, determined like Steve.

The flush on the boy’s cheeks is enough to let Bucky know he’s got the right of it. He shakes his head. He remembers being in school, going to dances.

Having a future that didn’t include all of this.

This one could have had that too, and he threw it away like it didn’t mean anything.

"I saw Captain America," the boy says, eager.

Captain who?

He pulls out a comic book from his gear. “I got mine signed,” the boy says breathlessly. 

Bucky flips through the pages. Captain America, the star spangled man with a plan, leading troops to war. “Where’s this Captain America now?”

"I don’t know," the boy said. "I think Milwaukee if I remember the dates right."

Bucky hands the comic back to the kid without a word. “So he’s back home, and you’re—here?”

"He’s punched Hitler in the face over forty times!"

Bucky snorts, soft, looking at his worn shoes in the muck. “Maybe I’ll punch him in the face if he ever shows up on the front lines.”

The boy’s face falls. “C’mon—”

He claps the boy—no, soldier—on the shoulder. “You’ll see,” he promises. “You’ll see.”

He goes to his tent, pulls out what remains of his water-weathered paper and a nub of pencil. Steve, he writes, you won’t fucking believe this guy, calling himself Captain America like it means something—-

~*~

They go on missions. Sometimes they come back, sometimes they don’t. One time, the kid doesn’t come back, and Bucky has someone’s blood on his hands and the star spangled man with a plan running through his head because the kid wouldn’t stop fucking singing it when they were on the march, and now the whole camp’s quiet.

He cleans his guns, bullet percussion to _who’s strong and brave to save the American way_ as their commanding officer writes letters letting their families know they weren’t ever coming home again, and wasn’t that just sad.


End file.
